


No Rescue For The Wicked

by Senneres



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: And Suspected the Connection of the Compass to Their Curse, Blood and Violence, Exploration of Their Time in the Devil's Triangle, Gen, How He Discovered Jack Sparrow's Name, I Wanted an Explanation of How Salazar Knew So Much About the Boy Pirate Who Killed Him, Pre-Canon, Supernatural Elements, The Devil's Triangle, The Silent Mary (Pirates of the Caribbean), so I wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 15:50:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21000230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senneres/pseuds/Senneres
Summary: To never be rescued, to never leave, to be forever living dead apparitions of themselves as they had died... is it any wonder Capitán Salazar and his men became such cold-blooded killers?





	No Rescue For The Wicked

**Author's Note:**

> Spanish Translations at end.

Ghosts may not sleep, but they can dream.

Armando knows this, because he dreams.

Alive, he had ignored his dreams, in spite of his superstitious grandmother's firm warning that as the Capitán, he must _ always _ heed them.

Dead, his dreams were more than the vague warnings he'd previously received. No, now his dreams were as lucid as a vision from the Virgin Mary herself: wondrous - but also depressing and confusing.

He dreams of being free. Of blue skies over his head, and the wide expanse of sea before him, and the Devil's Triangle crumbling behind. He dreams of a young man, a boy really, staring at him with terrified eyes. But he dreams most frequently of an island that looks as if the heavens had come down to rest on it, a strange-looking Trident, and a beautiful woman with bright eyes, holding it... he wonders what the dreams mean.

When he is not dreaming, Armando remembers.   
  
He remembers the moments after he and his crew had first arisen in their new forms. The overwhelming despair and horror - and the bitter rage that filled him as he stood for the first time on the surface of the inky black waters, staring at the wreck of La María Silenciosa. Knowing he had died, and yet was somehow still alive.

He remembers the first time he saw the ship.  
  
He'd heard tales of it before – a ship that collected all the souls lost at sea. A ship that escorted them to the Next Place - wherever and whatever that Place was. He wasn't sure anymore if there even was a place would accept a cursed man like him. But alive, he’d dismissed stories of a ship that came for your soul as fanciful falsehoods.

“I put my trust in Heaven and the Saints, I trust a true Spanish ship and a truer faith.” He'd said once to Lieutenant Lesaro. “There is no such ship as a 'Flying Dutchman'!”  
  
But now, dead and cursed, he knew those tales were also true.  
  
He remembers watching the blinding sunlight knifing sharply through the lopsided stone arch to their prison, as it rose up from underneath the waves. Perhaps it had only been seconds since their death. Perhaps days. But it was the first ship they had seen, and it had filled them all with hope.

“Es en barco!” His crew had cried, watching in wonder.

As one, Armando’s men instinctively leapt onto the water, running towards it. In their desperation to flag it down, they didn’t acknowledge the strangeness of the fact that they were running on the water for the first time. Their focus was on the ship that somehow, intuitively, they knew had come for them. But Armando did not go with them. No, he stayed on the deck of La María Silenciosa, forced to silently admit that he would relinquish heaven itself, if it meant a chance to exact justice on the world that still had his murderer breathing in it. He watched as his men reached the rocky entrance, watched when they realised they could not proceed. They tried, again and again, to get through – but to no avail. An invisible force kept them prisoner. They were trapped.

The mysterious ship remained for some time, just beyond the edge of the arch.

“¿Por que no entra?” They cried out to one another. “¿Por que no nos rescata?”

But there was no rescuing for them.

After several fruitless minutes, the ship slipped slowly beneath the waves.

He still sees it, every now and then, sailing past the entrance to their prison. But it never ventures in.

He remembers the first time a merchant ship entered the Devil’s Triangle. How eager his crew were to board the ship! They had all been so hopeful of rescue, of somehow being allowed to leave. They'd hoped that with a different ship under their ghostly feet, the Triangle would release its hold on them. That they could sail out. But they had forgotten in that desperate moment of hope the awful horror of their appearance. The look on the sailors’ faces when they saw the disfigured Capitán and his crew …

Brandishing a golden crucifix in plump little hands, a pompous-looking man in richly embroidered clothes pushed forward, denouncing the 'devils' in the name of 'Cristos'.

He brought back memories to Armando. Memories of the rich noblemen he'd known once in Cadiz. The ones who'd mocked his destitute mother, after the shame and scandal of treason sent his father to prison, and her to the whorehouses to earn money. The ones who'd refused to even see him when he'd gone, humiliated and desperate, to beg for their assistance to find her. The ones who'd ridden by on their fine horses, while he tried to wrap his threadbare coat around his frail mother's shoulders on the side of the road, and sneered at them.  
  
The merchant shook the crucifix in his face with so much assurance that it would force his departure, that Armando had laughed.

“Christ denounced fat old thieves like you,” he told him in Spanish, his blackened lips stretching over his teeth.

The man's face went purple, his jowls wobbling in rage as he cried, “Avaunt, foul demon! Go back to the black pit you crawled from, and release us good Christian men!”

How easy it had been for Armando to slide his sword through that fat gut, watching as the rolls of rich velvet-covered flesh almost closed over the hilt. He had to shove him backwards in order to pull it out, the fat man falling to the deck with a look of utter disbelief. The crucifix had slid from his stubby fingers, tumbling into the spreading blood as he breathed his last.

In terror, half the merchant's men had panicked, and attempted to fight their ghostly invaders; while the other half tried to steer their ship out of the godforsaken place.

But that day Armando learned that once a ship had entered The Devil’s Triangle, it could not leave – so long as Armando and his men were aboard. Try as they might, the invisible force kept pushing them back, even as the ship lurched forward. They all saw that the Devil's Triangle was never going to let them go. He never forgot his men's despairing faces in that second, never forgot the way their desperation twisted their cracked grey features, or the way it twisted his own cracked heart. They deserved freedom, but there was no freedom for them. They had died, they were cursed, but they were trapped – while the ones who had done it to them had gone free. And how that realisation had enraged Armando! How it had enraged his men!

They'd begun to slaughter wholesale, giving vent to their feelings until the deck was slick with blood. He remembers the thrill he felt when La María Silenciosa woke for the first time, as though the blood and fury called to her. The awe and the delight that filled him as she reared up and smashed her great carcass down on the luckless merchant vessel. The slither of regret as he and his crew stood on the inky waters once more, surveying the wreckage as it sank.

He remembers, some months later, the very first pirates that sailed with arrogant bravado through the black waters towards them, mocking jeers spouting from their reckless mouths. He remembers how, after the satisfying crunch of broken bone under his foot and the spray of blood across their faces, he held the few remaining survivors trembling at sword point. And how it came to him in that moment to ask if perhaps they knew of a certain pirate, one that might have boasted of killing the infamous El Matador Del Mar, the Butcher of the Sea.

It was the first time he promised to spare one of them – but only if they could answer his questions. How eager they were to save themselves by telling him any name, every name! It had been difficult to ascertain what the truth was – and what was desperate lies.

But, over the years, _one_ name became the consistent answer: Jack Sparrow.  
  
“Jack... Sparrow?” He'd questioned the name when he first heard it. “Is that his... real name?”  
  
And no. It was a name he'd earned. Apparently, because of the way he’d mocked Capitán Salazar from the crows’ nest that day, like a tiny sparrow. As though chirping out his threats across the waves to El Matador Del Mar was no more consequential a thing than the actions of the mere little birds that hopped along the gutters, pecking up crumbs. As though it had been _easy_. So easy, that only a tiny and inconsequential Sparrow had been all it took, to defeat_ him_.

When the trembling pirate explained this to Salazar, he became a storm of bloodshed.

“Sparrow?” He’d screamed in pain and fury, slashing and hacking with his sword. “_Sparrow_!?”

He left no survivors that time.

One time, a trembling coward, eager to be spared, babbled long and nonsensically on Jack Sparrow – about a swan, and a pearl, and a mutiny. But it wasn’t until the man spoke of a compass that he had the Capitán’s full attention. For the pirate described something exactly like the small box he’d seen swinging from that insolent boy’s hand moments before they’d sailed to their doom. He learned that it pointed to what its owner wanted most, and that Jack Sparrow rarely let go of it.

After that, other pirates gave him varying tales of the Sparrow losing the compass to a witch, or stealing it back. Or even, incredibly, _ giving _ it to others – but strangely, never selling it.

Over the years, Capitán Armando Salazar becomes convinced that this compass is the key to their freedom. That one day, he and his men will leave the Devil's Triangle. He starts to believe that the compass is the gatekeeper, their gaoler; its magic the invisible barrier holding them inside their dark prison. One day, when Jack Sparrow grows tired of living, he will no longer want the compass. And then, the compass will release them. How exactly it will come about, though, he does not know. But he does know with a deep certainty that one day, he _ will _ be free.

Because he dreams it.

**Author's Note:**

> SPANISH TRANSLATION:
> 
> Es en barco - It's a ship
> 
> ¿Por que no entra? - Why won't it come in?
> 
> ¿Por que no nos rescata? - Why don't you rescue us?


End file.
